The Engineer's Cats are back. h/t Nonny Mouse and Smoochie.

Open Thread below....

Well, I know when both of my cats (Sam and Babe) want to eat---that's for sure. I just didn't know how much power they actually have over the human race.

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.

Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.

This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.

"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom." They know us

Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.

McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans' sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound "less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to," she said.

NY Times (reg. req'd.):

Government investigators said Monday that byproducts from pet food contaminated with wheat gluten imported from China were used in chicken feed on some farms in Indiana.

The latest revelation came as part of the investigation into imported rice protein concentrate and wheat gluten that have been found to contain melamine and melamine-related compounds. Pet food contaminated with melamine has killed at least 16 cats and dogs and sickened thousands of others.

The Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration said that some 30 broiler poultry farms and eight breeder poultry farms in Indiana had received contaminated feed in early February and fed it to chickens within days of receiving it. All of those potentially affected chickens have since been processed.

The two agencies said they believed the likelihood of illness to people eating contaminated chicken was low because the contamination was most likely diluted. Without evidence of harm to humans, the agencies said they were not issuing recalls of any of the processed chicken products.

Why do I not feel comforted by the assurances from the federal agencies? At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Soylent Green is in the food.

BREAKING: Americans ate 3 million melamine-tainted chickens!

Think Moderate: President Bush lies (again) about the troop 'surge'

d r i f t g l a s s: Please, I am begging you. Begging. Keep defending Alberto Gonzales! Keep regurgitating GOP talking points many Friedmans after the facts have consigned them to the compost heap of history.

INSTAPUTZ: Wingmutts accuse captured Brits of 'cowardice' and even cite the GENEVA CONVENTIONS!....and they're beating the war drums

Norwegianity: How a bogus letter became the case for War

Sic Semper Tyrannis 2007: A couple more BUSHCO flacks experience eleventh-hour conversions. Take note of both the accuracy of their present analysis and the egregious crap that they've been shoveling until now.

HOLY CRAP: The Conservative Weather Channel...Sexual and religious addictions aren't strange bedfellows...Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?...Beware The Workplace Religious Freedom Act...The right to worship, or not...Mr.Deity, and the signs from god...Bible Study for Atheists...Top Ten Courses offered by Pat Robertson's Law School...God Debate: Sam Harris vs. Rick Warren...Religious Right fat cats bankroll legal crusade against church/state separation...It's Stem Cell Time...Did the Red Sea Part? Fuhgeddaboudit!

Shakespeare's Sister has moved over to Shakesville

The hits just keep on coming on this story. There's a chance that this gluten will show up in human food now. It's telling that the FDA has yet to release the name of the US distributor of this gluten.

David Goldstein has more:

Del Monte Foods has confirmed that the melamine-tainted wheat gluten used in several of its recalled pet food products was supplied as a "food grade" additive, raising the likelihood that contaminated wheat gluten might have entered the human food supply.

"Yes, it is food grade," Del Monte spokesperson Melissa Murphy-Brown wrote in reply to an e-mail query. Del Monte issued a voluntary recall Saturday for several products under the Gravy Train, Jerky Treats, Pounce, Ol' Roy, Dollar General and Happy Trails brands.

Wheat gluten is sold in both "food grade" and "feed grade" varieties. Either may be used in pet food, but only "food grade" gluten may be used in the manufacture of products meant for human consumption. Published reports have thus far focused on tainted pet food, but if the gluten in question entered the human food supply through a major food products supplier and processor, it could potentially contaminate thousands of products and hundreds of millions of units nationwide.

Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine said the FDA is not aware of any contaminated gluten that went into human food but said he could not confirm this "with 100 percent certainty." Wheat gluten is a common food additive used as a thickener, dough conditioner, and meat substitute. It is widely used as an additive in commercial bakery items and special purpose flours.

The FDA announced today that it has traced the contaminated wheat gluten to a single processor, Xuzhou Anying Biological Technology of Peixian, China, but has not released the name of the U.S. distributor who supplied the product to Del Monte, Menu Foods, Nestle Purina, and Hills Nutritional. In all, more than 70 brands and over 60 million cans and pouches of dog and cat food are now part of this massive recall, as well as at least one brand of dry cat food.

In related news, pet status as property may shift after recall (h/t Ilena Rose)

Continue reading »

Compassionate corporatism at work. As a devoted pet owner, this really chaps my hide:

DailyKos:

Time for a class action suit, folks:

A Chicago woman sued Menu Foods on Tuesday, alleging the pet food manufacturer delayed announcing a recall of 60 million containers of dog and cat food despite knowing its products were contaminated and potentially deadly.

Dawn Majerczyk, 43, said her orange tabby, Phoenix, fell sick last week just two days after he ate a single package of Special Kitty. It is one of 95 cat and dog food brands recalled by Menu Foods of Canada. Friday's recall came two weeks after nine cats died during routine company taste tests of its products, the Food and Drug Administration said.

This is outrageous! MenuFoods knew this product was deadly as early as last month! I am absolutely floored that they allowed deadly products into the marketplace after animals died during internal testing.

Bob wrapped up Face the Nation today with this:

SCHIEFFER: Finally, a personal thought. We have come through what may have been one of the worst weeks in America's history, a week in which government at every level failed the people it was created to serve. There is no purpose for government except to improve the lives of its citizens. Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.

Download | play -WMP

As the floodwaters rose, local officials in New Orleans ordered the city evacuated. They might as well have told their citizens to fly to the moon. How do you evacuate when you don't have a car? No hint of intelligent design in any of this. This was just survival of the richest." (hat tip BJ for the transcript)"

Bob tells it like it is. He's been railing against what he perceives to be problems within the government of late. Bob exposes the fallicy that people were warned so they should have left the city. How? Thanks Bob, for saying what needs to be said over and over again. This government is not helping to improve out lives except the fat cats of course.
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Bill Frist disclosed that he went to animal shelters and pretended to adopt the cats, telling shelter personnel he intended to keep them as pets. Instead he used them to sharpen his surgical skills, killing them in the process.

James Dobson: When I returned I held up the belt and again told my angry dog to get into his bed. He stood his ground, so I gave him a firm swat across the rear end and he tried to bite the belt. The tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast... I eventually got him to bed, but only because I outwieighed him 200 to 12.

Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler) In his youth he trapped dogs and cats in orange crates and shot arrows through the boxes.

Jeffrey Dahmer staked cats to trees and decapitated dogs.

Henry Lee Lucas As a child, he killed every cat on his parent's farm.

David Berkowitz killed his neighbour's Labrador retriever.

Interview with Ghazi al-Yawar talks about AMerican Troop levesls.

MR. RUSSERT: But that will take several years.

PRES. AL-YAWAR: No. I don't think it will take several years.

MR. RUSSERT: You believe American troops...

PRES. AL-YAWAR: It will take months.

MR. RUSSERT: You think American troops could be out of Iraq in months?

PRES. AL-YAWAR: Well, months--we're talking about months, probably; I don't know, six months or eight months or a year. But I don't think it will take years. Definitely not.

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Russert interviews Sen. Harry Reid:

MR. RUSSERT: Private accounts for Social Security--the president has made that a priority of his domestic agenda. Will you work with him in privatizing part of Social Security?

SEN. REID: And if the president has some ideas about trying to improve it, I'll talk to him, and we as Democrats will, but we are not going to let Wall Street hijack Social Security. It won't happen. They are trying to destroy Social Security.

MR. RUSSERT: No private accounts?

SEN. REID: They are trying to destroy Social Security by giving this money to the fat cats on Wall Street, and I think it's wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: Why couldn't you accept Clarence Thomas?

SEN. REID: I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I don't--I just don't think that he's done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.

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